The end of public space: one law to ban them all

Laws handing sweeping new powers to police
and private security to restrict access to public space are
extinguishing the diversity of civic life.

The idea of public space, as it developed in the modern
period, was space for the free use and enjoyment of the citizenry. The
temper and character of public space should be determined not by any
private or public authority, but by the ways in which people choose to
use it.

A bill currently passing through the UK parliament will
mean the death-knell of this principle. When the Anti-Social Behaviour,
Crime and Policing Bill becomes law in a few weeks, we can say that
there is no longer such a thing as public space proper in Britain.

This
Bill greatly expands powers for state authorities to control who can do
what in public space – to such a degree that councils and the police
will have an almost free hand to determine the use of all public spaces
from civic squares to rural footpaths.

These new powers include
‘Injunctions for the Prevention of Nuisance and Annoyance’, under which
anybody whose activity could cause ‘nuisance and annoyance’ to ‘any
other person’ can be issued with an injunction prohibiting them from
this activity or imposing positive conditions upon them. This
‘annoyance’ definition is so broad that it could catch most things
people do in public space – after all, busking, preaching, protesting,
wearing certain clothes, singing etc, all annoy somebody.

Simultaneously
‘Public Space Protection Orders’ (PSPOs) will mean that local
authorities can ban activities which they believe have a ‘detrimental
effect’ on the ‘quality of life’ of the area. Again, this could catch
almost anything – skateboarding, ball games, public drinking, talking
loudly and so on. Worse, it is a summary power meaning the authority
doesn’t have to consult the public and can be targeted at particular
groups. A council could ban homeless or young people from a park, or
from a town centre at particular times.

A new dispersal power will
allow police to remove any individual from ‘a locality’ for up to 48
hours; and new confiscation powers will allow them to confiscate
property which they believe has been used (‘or is likely to be used’) in
an activity which ‘harasses, alarms or distresses a member of the
public’.

All these powers have precursors. The injunctions replace
‘anti-social behaviour orders’; PSPOs replace separate powers to ban
dogs and public drinking. These previous powers were bad enough: the
Manifesto Club created a Google map of London at bannedinlondon.co.uk, showing how little of the capital remains untouched by no-leafleting, no-drinking, no dogs or no-protest zones.

But
the new bill will take things to an entirely new level, removing
existing checks on the use of powers, such as the need for public
consultation or to prove a case beyond reasonable doubt. This bill will
make authorities’ total control over public space a daily reality.

Similar
powers have developed recently across the Western world. In Australia,
the ‘prohibited behaviour order’ can be used to prohibit someone who has
not been convicted of a crime from activities such as carrying pens or
going to a public library. The book, Banished: The new Social Control in Urban America,
charts the development of draconian powers in US cities, ranging from
‘stay out of park orders’ which ban somebody from city parks, to ‘stay
out of area orders’ which can ban someone from an area of the city,
including the entire city centre, and ‘trespass orders’ which prohibit
someone from entering particular property, such as a housing estate or
shopping mall.

These controls are exerted by a fusion of public
and private interests, with state authorities and business interests
(who are increasingly the legal owners of what we think of as public
space) forming seamless collaborations to restrict what they see as
unseemly or ‘messy’ activities. These collaborations include: private
security guards issuing fines on behalf of councils; business
associations pressuring for new restrictions such as leafleting bans;
the police issuing trespass orders on private property without the
owner’s consent. This is a new alliance of a business and state elite,
set against civil society. What turns out to be ‘messy’ is social life
itself – skateboarders, protesters, buskers, leafleteers, children
playing games – that is, any activity that is not shopping or getting
from A to B.

We need not look to Russia or China, but only to our own squares and streets for a warning of the threat to public space.

What
now? I am part of a coalition called Reform Section 1, which
successfully convinced the Lords to vote to tighten up Injunctions in
the Anti-Social Behaviour Bill. This is good news, but the contents of
the Bill are so extreme that amendments at this stage will only solve
part of the problem.

What is needed is a comprehensive rediscovery
of the idea of public space; and then, its concerted defence against
the forces which would squash it out of existence.

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